This will be my final post, as I have reached the end of my internship here at RNEL. I was again able to see new projects and have a great time. At the beginning of the week, I had the opportunity to be a test subject for a student’s EEG. They hooked up multiple wires to my head, as well as grounding wires to my ankle and wrist. They then attached an electrical stimulation electrode to my left pointer finger. The electrode was connected to a DS8R, a current stimulator that generated pulses that were then sent to my finger through the electrode. It first sent out a series of imperceptible pulses for a set amount of time while they monitored my brain activity. It then would send the same pulses, but much stronger the second round. The test alternated between the two types of stimulation. The point of this test was to analyze what the brain activity looks like when you feel a pulse versus what it looks like when you can’t feel a pulse, even though it’s there.
These are the wires that were attached to my head for the EEG.
Throughout the week, we continued to work on the syncing issue between Delsys and Motive. We decided that using an Arduino instead of the NI-DAQ would be more effective because we wouldn’t have to go through Matlab. I worked on setting the Arduino up and, with the help of Bailey, was able to program it to hold a 5V pulse when triggered and drop the pulse when triggered again. This made it so that Delsys could send the start trigger and it would record along with Motive until the stop trigger was sent. Finally getting the two to sync was the perfect way to end my internship. We were able to record a trial of motion, EMG, and force sensor data.
This is the Arduino Uno that we used for syncing.
On my last day, Doug took the group of us that were leaving the lab in August out for lunch. It was fun to talk with everyone and it was a good way to end my time at the lab. As my time in Pittsburgh has come to a close, I would like to thank Doug Weber and everyone at the Rehab Neural Engineering Lab for allowing me to intern at the lab and for always making me feel welcome. I send a huge thanks to my host family. I’m so lucky that they were able to take me in and I had so much fun spending time with them. I am extremely grateful to Sarah Holbrooke and the Pinhead Institute for making this all possible. These past three weeks flew by and I can’t believe I’m already back home in Montrose. I’m sad to have said goodbye to Pittsburgh, but I’m so excited to continue on with the knowledge and experience I have gained from this amazing opportunity.
My work building for the last three weeks.
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